After a morning of playing in the flight simulator, my friend had to skip off to a meeting for a while. I spent the next few hours bumming around the airport. Was a beautiful place to bum around…

After lunch, we met back up and headed off for another adventure in the Cirrus. I got to fly left seat again and was told that at the conclusion of the flight – depending on how things went – I would earn my high performance aircraft endorsement.

This was, by far… by miles… by infinity, the most amazing, beautiful, awe-inspiring flight of my life. After departing KVGT, we hit up the following locations –

Hoover Dam

2. The Lake Mead Narrows – My friend talked me through the maneuvering. Below is a video recreation from the actual flight path he recorded in CloudAhoy:

3. Temple Rock

4. Grand Canyon

We circled the Grand Canyon Skywalk as well –

5. Lost City

6. Valley of Fire

The entire flight path looked like this:

GoPro Video, wing view (unfortunately the camera died as soon as we hit the Canyon):

My life has been forever changed. Oh, and yes, I successfully earned my high performance aircraft endorsement!

Since my flight home that night was a redeye, I was able to go out and explore Las Vegas for a few hours. I’m not really one for loud, flashy places, but I can see the appeal.

The Monkey seemed to dig it…

Special thanks to the Bell Captain at Bally’s for helping to make my time in the city a pleasant one.